-Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad: The undue delay in remitting the first installment of loan waiver amount to banks by the Telangana state government has resulted in farmers across the state losing crop insurance benefit for the ongoing kharif season. Reports from Telangana districts confirm that the government did not remit the amount that was promised by it to banks by September 30, the last day for the banks to make adjustments of...

-Economic and Political Weekly     Sustained and focused efforts have to be made by the Tamil Nadu state government to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of the state. S Rajendran (myrajendran@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu. Due to the failure of the north-east monsoon in December 2013, Tamil Nadu is witnessing drought like conditions this year, leading to poor agricultural productivity, rural distress,...

-Down to Earth   Too high a premium for too little cover Maharashtra government appears to have learnt no lesson at all from the hailstorms that lashed the entire state in March this year, and yet again lashed several districts in May, if its new decision to include three orchard crops - orange, sweet lime and guava - in its Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) on an experimental basis during the current...

-The Hindu Business Line   Loan write-offs will become redundant if we have a robust crop insurance system The Chief Minister of residual Andhra Pradesh N Chandrababu Naidu may have bought time in implementing his lavish pre-poll promise of waiving ₹54,000 crore worth of farm loans. The decision to appoint an expert committee to recommend guidelines on the waiver may well be a ploy to defer - even soften - the impact of...

-The Business Standard   Badly structured insurance leaves Indian farmers exposed Ever since its inception in the early 1970s, agricultural insurance has defied all attempts to make it farmer-friendly and economically viable. Over half a dozen different models for farm risk management have been tried out, but with little success. The systems currently used - the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and the Modified NAIS (MNAIS) - were objected to by the Insurance...